<timbl>
(Norm, when it comes to NamespaceDocument-8 , it is worth saying in lots of
places that any program should basically look namespace documents up one, maybe
on installation, or maybe every few months, and keep it in a persistent cache.
This is so the servers (at w3.org for example) don't get drowned in just
re-requests for namespace documents. w3.org has a problem wit hDTD lookups no.
)

<Norm>
(Hmmm. I see.)

<DanC>
(I am profoundly uninspired when it comes to security. It seems important, but
darned if I can say anything specific about it.)

<DanC>
huh? I have tons of
stuff working with GRDDL that doesn't use RDFa, raman. RDFa is much less close.

need to
leave

<noah>
Are we losing our scribe?

<timbl>
rdfs:seeAlso

<Norm>
ScribeNick: Norm

Norm becomes
scribe

Some
discussion of relative merits of "a href" and
"rdfs:seeAlso"

timbl: For a machine that's "seeAlso aware", the namespace
document is useful

<noah>
TBL: I'm hoping the TAG will eventually set out guidance on which things, like
rdfs:see also, a machine should follow

danc: What sort of machine are we talking about? The consumer of .wsdl
is a web services toolkits.
... They could be taught to follow see also links, but I'm not sure what the
value would be.

<Zakim>
noah, you wanted to ask about conneg on the representations

noah: We could start with a RDDL document and later add RDF with
conneg.
... That led to a discussion of whether or not conneg should be used to serve
alternate formats.
... But these are secondary resources and I'm not sure we have a good story for
talking about links with fragids in this context.
... Does the link with fragid represent the same thing if RDF and HTML are
conneg'd?
... I'm not sure we ever decided that.

DanC: Yes, that's the state of play, and we have the same problem in
other areas, like QT functions and operators.

noah: I think I'd like the answer to be "yes" for better or
worse.
... We've established '#'s for some things and they're out in the wild so they
better work.
... I think if I want a prose explanation I should be able to get that and if I
want an RDF explanation, I should be able to get that too.

timbl: What's the relationship between the pieces

<DanC>
(I'd like a name for the analog of 404 in #-space... when you get a
representation and it has nothing matching that fragment. Anybody got a
suggestion? unbound fragment ref?)

noah: For the Schema data types, you can have <baseuri>#integer,
<baseuri>#double, etc.
... I don't think we have complete closure about what's identified by
<baseuri>
... I take it as an abstraction for the namespace. The things that seem like
documents are representations of that resource, I think.
... I believe timbl's position is that the <baseuri> refers to the
document-ey thing I get back.

timbl: There's a pun in URIs used for two things; syntactically it's
used as the prefix. But by itself it identifies the namespace document.
... I think information resources always identify documents.

DanC: I didn't think that's where we landed.

timbl: Representations are the actual bitstreams. If the resource is a
list of things, I'm happy to have the list in different orders if they're
unordered.

<DanC>
what timbl actually said was "... I use information resource only for
things that have a beginning, middle and end"

<DanC>
and I meant to ask "really? that doesn't sound like things that can be
posted to."

Thanks for
the correction, DanC

noah: The resource is the potentially infinite collection.

timbl: (reference to information theory) when you look this thing up,
you're going to be more informed. An information resource to me is that
information, not the subject of the information.

noah: would it be reasonable for me to define a resource which is all
the square roots of all the integers.
... blah-blah-blah#144 refers to the number 12.
... Or "/", I'm just talking about the infiniteness of the set.
... One representation si a java program that computs the squre roots

timbl: For me, a representation is a string of bits and some metadata.
What you get in http.
... Those bits, in the given language convey the information that was the
information resource.

noah: If the table wasn't infinite; if it was the square roots of the
first 100 integers. I could then just give you an HTML page that conveyed it as
a table.

timbl: No. The representation of the set must have a different URI. An
information resource isn't a set of numbers.
... The statement that the set contains these numbers is an information
resource, but that's distinct from the set.

noah: I would have thought they could be conveyed as information.

timbl: We played with the words a lot

<DanC>
(where timbl says "it's improtant to distinguish between the set of
numbers and the description of it", I'm not yet convinced. I agree that
you _can_ distinguish, but I don't know why it's important to.)

timbl: It's not coherent not to distinguish between them.

noah: I want to distinguish them, but I think they're both information
resources.
... What I hear timbl saying is that the only one I'm happy to call an information
resource are the ones that are documenty

timbl: It's really important because the web is about communication and
when I give you a URI I expect you to be able to get information with that URI.

noah: If you ask people what a namespace is, I don't think they'll say
"document". It's more set like.
... Once we say "I've got that" now at some level, by the time we get
to representations, everyone agrees that what we get is a document.
... The problem is that given a namespace in my left hand, there are lots of
different kinds of documents that I might like to write; in RDF, in HTML, in
English, in French, etc.
... But that leaves us in the position of asking what is the fundamental
document that the namespace URI names (because I have to pick one). But then we
trip over how one is a representation of the other.

<DanC>
(I find timbl's position mildly more appealing, but the argument seems to be by
assertion. It's maybe good enough to convince me, but it's not at all good
enough for me to take and convince other people.)

noah: What's really fundamental is the set; how can we use webarch to
say that that is on the web?

timbl: we could make it clearer by having a 303 response.
... As a result, the only thing that's identified by the URI is some collection
of documents.
... It's not neat and tidy, but none of the processes that get the URI really
need the abstraction.

noah: I could say that I control that namespace, yes?

timbl: Yes, you can talk about the document, but they all use the DC
namespace to talk about how they're managed.

Scribe isn't
sure he captured that

timbl: We don't have a way in rdf of saying that this property is in a
namespace; we don't have the concept of a namespace.
... The namespace concept is only used in common parlance.

DanC: Yes, that one of the documents would say that the SPARQL example
is good or not.

<noah>
Well, I guess what I'm hung up on is that in practical terms, the namespace is
an important thing. People talk about namespaces all the time. If we don't have
a simple, first class way to give a Web name (I.e. URI) to the namespace itself,
it seems we've lost something important.

vincent: I don't think we can go further today.

<noah>
Fodder for the F2F?

Noah: We don't have a clean simple story about what a namespace URI
identifies that avoids a 20 minute discussion

Norm: I share Noah's concerns about the practicality

vincent: I'll plan to schedule discussion about
abstractComponentRefs again when Dave is present.
... Adjourned

<timbl>
I note that DanC's point was different form Noah's. Dan C seemed to be asking
whether something could be a set of names and alos a document. Noah and Tim
seemed to agree that the set of terms and the document were distinct things,
and just differ in which they were suggestsing was names by the NSURI.

<DanC>
I'm not interested to persue that point any more, fyi.

<DanC>
" whether something could be a set of names and alos a document"

<DanC>
hmm.

<DanC>
well, maybe. I don't advocate it, in any case.

<DanC>
There's a clear-and-present question in the semweb best practices WG: can a
wordnet word (synset) be an information resource?